I absolutely agree with this and is the point I’m also trying to make in my posts. This whole question was triggered (it’s obviously not the only reason but was the trigger) to open the poll and, prior to that, the whole discussion at Weglose 'Wege' im Hochschwab.
I mapped a difficult path on the terrain rarely treaded by mountaineers, with a sporadic (but incredibly helpful and useful) cairn, because I would like the map to serve the purpose of showing the way, and not just display what’s already visible and obvious. In a fog, or even just by looking from a distance, it is not always easy and obvious to know that there is a pass there. Just like in the CAI case, linked in the original post. I find this incredibly useful information and the reason to actually use the map. I don’t need the map to tell me the obvious stuff.
The initial path was based on GPX tracks created by people who went down the route earlier (from a touring web site), later confirmed in person. This is when other pointers were identified. To me, the path/way was clear. I’m pretty sure it would not be to about 90+% of the general population, though. I would have had much harder time had the cloud not dispersed later in the afternoon.
So, I presume, there are really two questions here:
- should such routes/paths/ways be mapped in OSM?
- And, if yes, how?
One of my concerns is that, on this particular mountain, there are dozens of difficult paths on OSM that come from the valley to about 100-200m from the plateau and then disappear. To me that’s highly misleading. It can mean that either there is no way further up due to cliffs, or it may mean completely the opposite - now the path is no longer visible but still possible and, after 100m you reach the plateau and can walk to a nearby marked hiking path. I would like to go to some of these routes and it would help to at least know that they are not dead ends, which is at the moment not possible, just based on the map data.
I fully agree that there is a need for another primary tag. One suggestion was to use highway=scrambling, which fits in some instances. My particular case wasn’t really scrambling but a “relatively ok, T4” route. But it is not marked nor very obvious, and goes between cliffs and stones which can be highly dangerous. It is partly on steep terrain, but doable and not harder than many marked routes which are mapped and have a higher grade.